The Divine Farce Quotes

“To the extent that heaven above is isolation, it seems to be hell. To the extent that hell below is a crowd, it apparently is heaven. Maybe we are condemned to an endless nagging sense of discomfort balanced against comfort, satisfaction against the itch to escape.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“Reach as high as you can. Ascend to heaven. Rise to the challenge. Stretch to the sky. Elevate your mind. Seek knowledge at the summit. Attain the pinnacle of joy, the peak of success, the spire of aspire, the loft of lofty.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“The world is not what it is: the world is what you make it.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“Paradoxically, that thought of eternity took away some of my fear. To be trapped for a day, even one day, was brutal. A year was sickening. Any finite amount of time implied an eventual release, and my longing for release hurt me in the gut like chronic appendicitis. But eternity—that was on a different level of conception. It forced the mind to acquiesce entirely and accept the here, the now, and the comfort, such as it was.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“If death hands you rancid shit strewn with human hair, make an escape ladder. Is that a variant of the adage?

Michael SA Graziano”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“I’d feel paradoxically full in the stomach, empty in my heart, tired, alone, content, whole, hollow, broken and repaired, cheated and lucky, useless and essential to the cosmic pattern.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“I came to know hundreds of private constellations. Animals, buildings, words, faces—it was my obsession. The ability to lose myself in a vast mural of the imagination, and in that way to separate myself occasionally from the others, was necessary to my equilibrium.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“When I do find you, the real you, one at a time or maybe both together, I’ll come swinging down on a rope, beating my chest, and then you will be amazed. Then we will be together again, almost like it was before, only better.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“In the mathematics of infinite hope against infinite numbers, my success is inevitable.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“I was, apparently, a wanderer. Was that the right word? I bashed my way out of one place and into another. I had fallen out of a chrysalis, fought through concrete and crowds, scaled heights, and achieved—what exactly? Ambiguity. Gains and losses in uneasy balance. A naked drift farther away and farther out from the truth of my original home. I never seemed to reach a goal. Maybe the exploration itself was a purpose. I couldn’t think of any other. Just like the purpose of a hammer is to hit things, I had no other way to relate to the substance around me except to do what was in me to do. That was not a satisfying answer, but it was all I could think of.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“I played God. Why not? I thought I was stepping into a vacancy.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“We were so driven by hunger and thirst, and so isolated from each other by the constant mixing of the crowd, and so numbed by the repetition of caverns and food troughs and rusty water pipes and perpetual battle, and so gratified at each orgiastic meal, that we had lost all our capacity for imagination. For vision.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“I couldn’t even make a new friend. I would only lose the friend in the crowd, the next time I searched for a meal or a drink. The rules of the divine game resulted in a certain isolation of the soul.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“I was good at hell.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“I tried hard to feel the warmth of universal inclusion. From many, one. From strife, love. A tessellation. A motet of uncountable voices. Especially when I was sitting comfortably, my back to the stone wall, my legs stretched out, my stomach filled up with biscuits and water, I could watch the crowd magnanimously and grasp the unity. At least I thought I could. I tried. I pretended.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“I had helped to knock a hole in heaven. I had walked away from it much too eagerly, and now I felt more sad for it than for me. I felt sad it was over, as if our triangulated love was a thing with a soul, and now it was dead, and only the valueless components were left, hopelessly scattered.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“His fears seemed to be an expression of conservatism. He was afraid of losing the familiar.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“Sometimes I did truly want to hurt myself. The sage became savage. My legs trembled from the pain in my knees.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“Our voices were so resonant in our sarcophagus, whispering and vibrating around and through my head, that all our sentences felt to me as though they came from my own mouth. I had trouble distinguishing. I would think, Did I say that? Did I just mutter something out loud, something unpremeditated that came out in a falsetto? Why would I do that? Am I insane already?”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“None of us could hear any indication of a hollow space behind the wall. Its solidity was so absolute that I lost the ability to imagine emptiness outside our microcosm. In my mind the universe was filled up infinitely with concrete, and at its center was one tiny bubble in which our randomly assorted souls had been entombed.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“We were in darkness. It was our home.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“Was I wrong? Was I blind to the simple truths that everyone else found self-evident?”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“but difficult was not the same as impossible.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“Theatrics don’t work if nobody cares.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“we were immersed in sonic color—”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“After the slow ages of nothing, I craved a hideous din.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“The rules of the divine game resulted in a certain isolation of the soul.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce

“Henry Greene’s hobby was his constant exercise. He did quarter squats—he couldn’t squat down any farther in the confined space—and he jogged in place and he did what he called resistance training, pressing his palms against the opposite sides of our tube and tensing every muscle in his torso. His exercise had a frenetic quality, as if he were trying to distract himself from the fundamental truths. For all his sarcasm and his disparagement and his cruel smile and his burly posturing, he was fragile. I could sense it as if my nerves had grown directly into his skin. Sometimes he would fly into insanity. He’d shriek with a strangled, pear-gargling sound. He’d thump his head against the wall—and if anyone had the physical strength to knock out his brains it was our Henry. The cracking sound of skull on cement was sickening. We’d grab him and Rose would wrap her thin strong tentacle arms around his head. He’d fight us, screaming and staggering, and we all three would get our share of bruises. He was much stronger than me. After a while he’d stop surging under us and calm down. Or give up. Well, he’d say after a long pause, in resignation and also in apology, it is what it is.”
― Michael S.A. Graziano, The Divine Farce